


lost and forgotten toys

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Episode: s03e04 Devils You Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5398046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asks.</p><p>Simmons’ eyes go wide and her mouth makes this shocked little O. “Should I?” she asks, sounding genuinely worried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost and forgotten toys

HYDRA designation: base L-8379. It’s a nondescript little building on an industrial lot just outside the city center. The parking lot’s too big for how many employees it can possibly hold, which Grant is hoping means there’s something interesting underneath.

At the moment though, he doesn’t much care so long as what is inside involves medical supplies. His shoulder hurts like a _bitch_. (Which he feels is appropriate given that it was Hunter who shot him.)

They weren’t planning on taking this site for another few days, but with SHIELD driving them out of the unnamed base (Grant is so glad he didn’t waste Nemesis on that place now), they needed somewhere close by to move in.

Markham jogs up to the truck as Kebo pulls into the lot. “We’re clear,” he says, which Grant _knows_ because like hell would his people be directing him in here if they weren’t. “There was minor resistance, but the majority of the staff were lab techs. So long as we don’t try to stop ‘em sciencing, they don’t much care what else we do in there.”

Well that’s interesting. “This place is still running?” Grant knew there were still people coming and going, but he thought they were just hangers on or civilians looking for a place to park their cars. Not a staff.

Markham looks just as surprised. “Yeah. But they’ve got all the toys and I already grabbed the most qualified person there to fix you up. Come on.”

Grant’s people are spread out along the perimeter and when Markham practically drags him inside (there will be restitution for this later), there are more lining the halls. Keenly aware of their stares, Grant shoves Markham off. “I was shot in the shoulder, not the legs.”

Behind them, Kebo makes a worried noise.

It’s a good thing Grant’s been shot because if his shoulder wasn’t already one giant, throbbing pain, he’d probably throw a punch at one of these idiots. Much as he loves the loyalty, he’s not a _child_.

Markham pushes open a door to a pristine lab. Repin is in the corner, already tapping away at one of the computers, and several of his people are standing at intervals around the room, but otherwise things seem to be running like normal.

“Is this him or should I be expecting another shoulder wound?”

Or _not_ normal. Grant’s boots actually skid on the tile floor as he stops dead. The woman standing to one side of the lab bench plainly waiting for him - it’s clear except for a tray of medical supplies, where everything else in here is more mad scientist - is _Simmons_.

“This is him,” Markham says gruffly. He pulls out the stool next to the table and steps back. Simmons waits expectantly.

Grant ignores them both and crosses the room to bend - slightly, _very_ slightly - over Repin. “This is a _HYDRA_ base right? I mean, it was before we got here?”

She jumps a little when he speaks but is quick enough to answer. “Yes, sir. Has been since before the uprising.”

“Right.” Grant takes another look around the room. Octopus logo on the wall. Black lab coats. It all seems like HYDRA. Except for Simmons.

She’s staring at him expectantly and when his gaze settles on her a little too long, she huffs. “I really do have other work to do.”

He watches her carefully as he returns to the stool. “No drugs,” he says, seeing the painkillers she has waiting. Don’t get him wrong, he wants them - bad - but he’s already had one undercover SHIELD agent try to kill him today. He sits and turns his back on her. “Watch her,” he says to Markham and Kebo.

They exchange a look. Probably they’re both wondering what the hell he thinks a five-foot-nothing scientist who’s a hundred pounds soaking wet is gonna do, but they both move to watch her work.

It’s a lot like the old days. Simmons tuts over his injuries and his refusal to take drugs while he stoically suffers through. He can’t watch her thanks to the placement of the shot, but he has other senses. She sounds like Simmons. Same turns of phrase, same rhythm of speech. And her hands are the same. They may be encased in gloves, but that’s better; he knows her fingers best when they’re tending an injury.

He closes his eyes when she starts stitching and touches the inside of his right arm. He knew, when he woke up alive down in that cell, that Simmons was the one to patch him up. The stitches were textbook, and that is oh so Jemma Simmons. He can feel that these are too.

“Done,” she says, once she’s smoothed a patch of gauze over the spot. “Though you really should have a medical professional look at that. I’m not exactly licensed.”

Grant spins on the stool, ignoring the pain. Her hair’s different, but everything down to the way she strips off her gloves is the exactly like what he remembers.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asks.

Behind her, Kebo and Markham tense up, but Grant’s placid smile keeps them from reacting beyond that. Simmons’ eyes go wide and her mouth makes this shocked little O. “Should I?” she asks, sounding genuinely worried.

There are a lot of ways to answer that question, and Grant’s still rolling them around on his tongue when they’re interrupted.

“Ma’am?” one of the techs calls.

She glances over her shoulder and when she turns back to him, her smile is a little strained. “I’m sorry, I have to see to this.”

He nods, granting her permission to go. He watches her leave, studying her gate for signs of a lie. “You said there was some resistance?” he asks Markham, never taking his eyes off her.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The man sitting on the floor of the break room was handsome once, but that change has nothing to do with Grant’s people. There’s a ragged section of his hair that’ll never grow back in, and it only highlights what’s been done to the rest of his face. Most of the scars might not have been too bad if they’d gotten proper care, but it’s clear those wounds were left to heal on their own.

“Oh, you’re alive!” Aldridge says with a snap of her bubblegum.

 _Bubblegum_.

 _This_ is Grant’s HYDRA.

“Glad to see it.” She’s lounging in one of the hard, plastic chairs, her feet up on the table like this is a day at the beach instead of a make-shift interrogation room. “Nice of everyone to _tell me_ ,” she adds, aiming a glare at Kebo.

“If he were dead, you’d know, what with all the looting and jumping ship.”

“Yeah, but it’s still nice to be told. Jeez.”

Grant ignores the harping and turns his attention to the man on the floor. “Hello,” he says, aiming for friendly.

The man spits, aiming for Grant’s shoes but only hitting the pool of bodily fluids that’s already thick on the floor.

Grant sighs long-sufferingly. So it’s gonna be one of those. “Name?” he asks. The man only glares. He asks again, this time pitching his voice over his shoulder.

“Alexi Bershov,” Aldridge says with no reverence whatsoever. “Formerly KGB. Heard he got caught selling secrets.”

And he’s alive? And free? That is damn impressive.

Kebo laughs once. “Bershov, you said?”

Aldridge produces the guy’s ID badge.

Kebo hunkers down so he’s more on Bershov’s level. “Even with the scars and the bloodying up, I can tell you, this ain’t Bershov.”

Grant rolls his eyes. “You’re sure?”

“Met him in Moscow back in ‘05. Nose is all wrong. Hair’s the right color but Bershov had a weird-shaped head. He couldn’t cut it that close or he’d look like something out of a close encounters movie. He’s a near match though, other than all that.”

“Great.” Grant leans against the table Aldridge has commandeered, forcing her to hastily pull her legs out of his way. “Alex?” he asks. “I’m gonna call you Alex. For the sake of simplicity, you understand, not for a second because I don’t believe my guy Kebo here. So, Alex, you present a problem for me, but not a new one. See, you have the name of a man who you cannot possibly be, and there’s a woman in the labs who looks like someone I know, acts like someone I know, talks like her-” Grant waves a hand lazily- “but she can’t possibly be that person. So you have ten seconds to tell me what the hell is going on in this base before I shoot you.”

Not-Bershov shifts on the floor. He brings one of his legs - the one that doesn’t look like it might be broken - up so he can rest one arm across it. His other hand is behind him, supporting him in a lounge to match Grant’s. He shows off a bloody smile.

Grant holds his stare, using it to study the scars again. The hand - the one hanging casually over his knee - is curled in a way that isn’t so casual. One of the fingers is missing its nail entirely and a couple of others have them growing in broken. This may not be Bershov, but there’s no doubt he survived a KGB prison.

“All those people out there,” Grant says, “they’re still working. And this guy wasn’t holding them here all by his lonesome. Brainwashing?”

Alex flinches.

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.”

The son of a bitch laughs and calls him something nasty in Russian.

“Alex,” Grant says, “as you can see, I was shot today. You wanna know why? Because seven months ago I set up this beautiful trap. The woman who screwed over my girlfriend? She’s beaten, tied to a chair. Behind her is a rifle, rigged to the door in front of her. The guy she loves rushes in blindly to save her, she gets to watch him bleed out on the floor. It’s like Christmas. But you know what happened instead? My girlfriend ends up shot in the gut, the lovebirds somehow survive, and I get a bullet in the back because _someone_ walked lover boy right past our security.”

Kebo doesn’t flinch, he’s good like that, but he does look ready to take a beating if Grant’s about to deal one out. Markham and Aldridge just look glad it’s not them.

“So I,” Grant says in a more measured tone, “as you can imagine, am having a hell of a day. And you know what would sooth my ragged nerves? A little one-on-one interrogation. So either you start talking or I’m gonna send Aldridge out for my kit.”

Before anyone can make a move, the door swings open. Someone is _so_ going to die for this; Grant asked for _privacy_.

“What the hell?” he demands as a thin, well-dressed woman walks in. She’s not one of his, so she has to be from this base and what are the guards doing letting her just waltz on in?

At least Markham’s on his game. He steps up in front of her and stares her down while his men at the door stutter excuses. The woman looks Markham up and down once before tipping her head to one side.

“You’re the new head of HYDRA?” she asks Grant.

“Director, yeah.” The head thing implies there are many, what with the symbolism and all. He prefers to be the only. Plus, it’ll piss Coulson off the first time he hears Grant called that.

“Good.”

She shifts the papers in her arms as she side-steps and Markham snatches the stack away from her. She grabs them right back without a moment’s hesitation and the look of utter shock on Markham’s face is the best thing Grant’s seen all day. Next to him, he can see Aldridge trying her damnedest not to laugh out loud.

The woman offers the files to Grant. “You’ll need to read over these and sign, and then there’s a depressingly thick folder you’ll need to review on base operations, but there are also the keys and access codes to be set up, so that’s slightly less horrible.”

Grant knows better than to take something a strange woman hands him, so he ignores the files and turns his attention to her employee ID. “Will I … Evelyn?”

“Evie. And yes, if you want to take possession of this base.”

Grant looks around the room, just to make sure everyone else is seeing the insanity too. When his eyes hit Alex, Evie finally notices him. Instead of freaking out like any reasonable person, she only sighs.

“Really, Bershov?” She sounds like a mother at the end of her rope. “Did you have to beat him?” she asks Grant.

“Not Bershov,” Grant says. “We’ve established that’s a fake identity. And I wasn’t here for the beating. I have people for that sort of thing. Did we?”

“He tried to stop us coming in,” Markham says.

“Did you explain that you were HYDRA?” she asks him. “And that you were merely here to take possession of a base that been operating for minimal direction for nearly a _year_?”

Markham might actually look a little guilty. It’s kind of hilarious.

“Yeah, about that,” Grant says. “Is everybody here brainwashed?”

Evie doesn’t flinch the way Alex did, but she does freeze, which is just as telling. “Why do you ask?”

Grant smiles. “Why else would they still be working here unless they were being forced?”

She shrugs. “I did give everyone who stayed after Whitehall’s death a substantial raise.”

The tension in the room turns palpable. All of his people - the ones in this room anyway - are well aware of the money issue. They had to kidnap an entitled little shit just to get enough funds to keep the ball rolling.

“They’re paid?” Grant asks, trying to keep his tone casual.

“Of course. That’s usually the reason people do a job.”

“And you gave them the raise? You’re in charge here?”

She shakes her head. “Dr. James is in charge, but I run payroll. And HR. And everything else except security and R&D. The rest of the support staff quit.”

“What about management?”

She scoffs. “They went running when SHIELD started cutting heads off.”

Considering what Grant’s seen of his predecessors, he’s not really surprised. “And you kept the money moving.”

She doesn’t offer a defense, doesn’t look like she thinks she needs one. Grant’s not sure she does.

“HYDRA’s accounts are still accessible?”

“Some of them, yes.” She looks around, calculating. “You need help.”

“I _needed_ money.” He plucks the papers from her hands. “But now things are looking up.”

“And you have a structure in place for handling payroll?”

Grant looks to Kebo. She’s got a point, mostly they just hand out wads of cash to underlings, who hand out smaller wads to their underlings and so on down the line. Some stability might help with morale, especially after today’s fuckup.

“Markham’ll help you work something out.”

Markham stiffens but he’s a good soldier, he’ll do as he’s told.

“Now, about the brainwashing. Everyone may not be, but that pretty little Brit in the labs? She is, right?”

“You mean Dr. James?”

There’s a grunt from Alex, who’s struggling to reach a more offensively viable position - it’s not going well. It goes even _less_ well when Grant shoves him in the chest with his boot.

“Definitely brainwashed then.” They probably wiped Simmons and gave her a fake name to minimize the risk of backsliding.

“You stay away from her, you-” Alex cuts off with a choking sound and, after a few seconds of gagging, a small, pink ball hits the mess on the floor. Aldridge’s gum.

When Grant turns her way, she only hums, proud of making that shot. He shakes his head. She gets the job done, that’s what matters, the priority here is Simmons.

Grant steps up to Alex, forcing him to tip his head back if he wants to look him in the eye. “You sweet on her?”

A laugh drags out of Alex. “Yeah,” he says sarcastically, “the whole amnesia-brainwashing thing really does it for me, you know?”

Grant grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him to his feet. The whole and mangled hands clutch at Grant’s arm, trying to take some of the weight off the broken leg as blood drains from Alex’s face.

“Careful,” Grant says, “that’s my friend you’re talking about.” He gives Alex a shove and the guy finally cries out as his leg crumples under him. Grant turns away from him dismissively and immediately his mouth quirks up in surprise. That Evie’s hiding behind Markham is expected, that Markham looks _protective_ isn’t. “I want her employee file,” Grant says kindly.

Evie doesn’t look too happy, but she’s smart enough to see how the wind is blowing. She heads for the door and Grant motions for Markham to keep an eye on her.

“Now.” Grant turns back to Alex. “You wanna tell me your real name?”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Not-Alexi Bershov does not, in fact, want to tell Grant his real name. But the man does a damn good job of holding out, Grant’ll give him that.

After Grant’s gotten tired of his mix of Russian gulag stoicism and HYDRA-bred snark, he grabs the file Markham brought him off the stack of papers Evie sent along. It is truly a massive amount of work that needs to be done to “officially” take this base, considering that Grant already took it. All that can wait though, and at the end of the day, Grant has Simmons sent to the executive office he’s commandeered for his own use.

She’s out of her lab coat and looks worn out from the day. “Drink?” he offers. Whoever held this office last, he left behind a hell of a wet bar.

Simmons shakes her head. “No, thank you.”

Grant salutes her with his tumbler of scotch and returns to his desk. “Sit, please.”

She looks annoyed, probably wants to get the hell out of here, but takes one of the chairs. Grant, instead of sitting in the imposing wingback, leans against the front of his desk to get a better view of her. She looks good. Stronger. He can see some definition in her exposed arms and the shorter hair style suits her.

“ _Do_ I know you?” she asks suddenly, sitting forward in her seat, her fists poised on her knees.

He smiles and sets his drink aside. “Yeah, you do. You really don’t remember me at all?” He knows she doesn’t. Whitehall’s file on her was very specific on that point. His descriptions of the days he spent wiping her read like a serial killer’s love note. She still has all the intelligence that makes her a valuable asset and she’s still herself, just a version completely devoted to HYDRA and with no silly memories of her days in SHIELD to make her question that.

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. There was an incident…” She trails off, her eyes sliding away.

He slips off the desk to kneel in front of her and rests his hands over hers. “Hey. I know you don’t remember, but we were friends. That’s why you freaked me out earlier. The odds of you being here when I’m ducking for cover? And then you don’t even know who I am?”

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“Not your fault. But I’d like to know what happened.”

She worries her lip and nods. “I don’t know, actually. I think they were trying to protect me by keeping things vague. I know SHIELD got a hold of me - they wanted intelligence about HYDRA’s bioweapon advances - and apparently they didn’t like my answers. Or lack of answers.” Her hands slip out from under his and she hugs herself, her fingers digging into her upper arms until her skin goes paper white. “The doctors say my amnesia is my own mind protecting me from the memory of what I went through.”

Grant presses his palms into her knees. “What’s the prognosis?”

“It could come back anytime,” she says with the same false brightness she used while she was dying from the Chitauri virus.

It could come back, there’s always that chance, but the real odds of that happening are a hell of a lot lower than she thinks. Whitehall took a lot of care to bury them down underneath a mountain of programming.

“I’m sorry,” Grant says, and means it. The only thing keeping her from curling up in that chair is him and he can’t help but be reminded of Kara. She put up a good front most of the time, but he remembers once, over dinner, when he made a joke about one of the Academy instructors. It was after he gave her her name back, but her memory was still slow and spotty and for some reason that one hole had her crumpling.

It hurts him, but he’s not going to help Simmons the way he did her. He _can’t_. Whitehall hid her away here so he could use her against SHIELD when the time was right and that’s just too good a weapon to let go.

“Listen,” he says, standing, “I’ve got a lot of paperwork to go through here and I’d love a distraction. How about I order some food and fill in some of those gaps for you?”

Her spine straightens up and in a blink she’s pulled herself back together. “Only if you stop torturing Bershov. He was only protecting us.”

He chuckles. “Same as always. For the record though, his name’s not really Bershov. He still hasn’t given me the real one.”

Simmons isn’t deterred. “He’s a good soldier. I’m sure you can make room for him.”

Grant is too, but the bastard’s also ridiculously loyal. “Fine, but you’ll have to talk to him. Far as I can tell, you’re the only one he likes around here.”

She shakes her head like he’s being ridiculous - he’s not, Alex is a stubborn fuck - and it’s exactly the way she used to on the Bus down to the spark of pleased infatuation in her eyes.

“Anything in particular you’re craving?” he asks, grabbing the phone to call Evie, who he’s pretty sure is setting herself up to be his assistant. So long as she’s helpful and doesn’t turn on him, he doesn’t much mind.

“You know what I like better than I do,” Simmons says with a flirty little smile. “Surprise me.”

Grant hits the intercom button. “Markham? Quit staring down Evie’s shirt and take Samantha here down to see Bershov. And Evie? Get me a list of decent take-out places around here.”

Simmons’ cheeks pinken at his use of her supposed first name and she hurries to meet Markham at the door. Oh yeah, Grant is definitely gonna be able to use her against Coulson.

 


End file.
